Brad Mehldau plays the Beatles

Brad Mehldau has a new album out of solo piano arrangements of Beatles songs (plus one David Bowie song for some reason.) It’s a good one!

Brad has been recording some discussions of the tunes. I love his description of Paul McCartney’s swing feel as “frumpy.”

Here he discusses not liking “I Am The Walrus” as a kid, which, same.

I appreciate his pointing out that the intro chords are based on the whole tone scale, which I hadn’t noticed.

Brad describes the feel of “Golden Slumbers” as churchlike.

Brad Mehldau fans know that he has been recording Beatles tunes for many years now. My favorite of his versions is this trio recording of “Dear Prudence“, with nasty, nasty drumming by Matt Chamberlain.

You should also check out this solo piano performance that pairs “Dear Prudence” with “Moon River.”

Brad fans also love his arrangement of “Blackbird.” The trio version is cool, but I like the solo version better.

Brad goes hard on “She’s Leaving Home“.

Check out the moment at 4:44 where he starts playing a loop of C#/E#, Bm7, Fmaj7/C, and G#7/F#. Gnarly!

Brad has a nicely contemplative take on “And I Love Her”.

Here’s a longer live solo version.

From one of the dustier corners of the White Album, here’s “Martha My Dear”.

For the sake of completion, I should also mention that Brad has one Beatles cover that doesn’t work for me, his recording of “Mother Nature’s Son” with soprano sax. Still, the rest of his arrangements range from good to great, so we can cut him some slack on that one.